This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday.

Americans aren’t happy about the data center boom, and they made their displeasure pretty clear this Election Day. Voters not only selected a slate of Democratic candidates who campaigned against data centers; they also approved more than 30 ballot measures aimed at reining in the power-hungry facilities.

You could argue that the ​“data center elections” really started a year ago, when Virginians selected Democrat Abigail Spanberger as their next governor. Virginia has more than earned its status as the data center capital of the world, with the latest estimates counting more than 700 facilities around the state, and Spanberger ran on a promise to keep their intense power demand in check.

In the months that followed, it became clear that data center developers were circling in on Great Lakes states and their abundant water resources — and that fighting the facilities was a winning campaign strategy. Take Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, who made data center regulation a prominent piece of his candidacy, and William Lawrence, a Democrat who won his U.S. House race after showing up at a local council meeting to fight a proposed data center.

Meanwhile in Ohio, Sherrod Brown, a three-term Democratic senator who was ousted in 2024 , will return to the chamber. Brown’s campaign painted his Republican opponent as ​ “ the face of data centers,” even though it cost Brown the support of some union labor allies who’ve backed him for decades but see data centers as creators of construction jobs.

Source link